Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Wild cucumbers...

Wild I tell ya!...I just wanted to show off some newly decal fired pieces...most of the forms themselves are from the last wood firing me and Nancy fired off right before Christmas. The images are new... 99% new images that I have been working on. They all started as my digital photographs and I manipulate them pretty heavily in Photoshop before printing them from my laser printer. Two of the large wood fired platters are sporting my images of the Wild Cucumbers or Balsam Apples, that Nancy has growing all over and around the studio and kiln area. They are strange, short, spiny cucumber like pods that grow on thick and vigorous vines. In the late fall when it starts getting really cold they dry out like gourds on a vine and their ends pop open. The interiors are complex structures that resemble a loofah gourd. I have been checking out these crazy little boogers for a while now and I am pleased to recreate them as decal images for these new forms. The first one is 11 inches across and lovingly warped and draped in ash from the firing and the second is 12 inches across. Its surface is stamped and marked and full of chicken grit breaking through its sheen. Both rough and tumble forms really show off my images of those oh so wild cucumbers...click to enlarge.

Another new image I recently made was of the Hops that are teamed up with the Wild

Cucumbers in a plot to cover the studio. The Hops too started as a digital photograph...below is a nice low, shallow but wide bowl that has the new Hops images. 10 inches across.

I will be posting a bunch of new work on my Etsy site soon. Hopefully just in time for some Valentine love...you know, all anybody really wants from his or her significant other is a nice piece of pottery...ahhh, if that were only true. Anyways, check out my cool new fav-o-rite little design..."Dodo farting flowers mug"...now really, what a sexy and romantic gift that could be...nothing says I love you like flowers from an extinct bird's sphincter.

In the next day or two, I will be off to Ohio to install my wall piece at the Dairy Barn Arts Center in Athens. I have that piece and another in their exhibition OH + 5'10, its their 7th annual regional biennial. I am going to install, drop the rest off and then stick around for the opening on Friday the 15th. I will be sure to post images from the show next week...same bat channel.

3 comments:

hi kyle, magnificent pieces. the combination of decals with the firing is beautiful and i'm drawn to both the hops (for obvious reasons) image and the wild cucumbers image. that spiky pod reminds me of jimson weed (datura) and it's spiky little devil's apple... and of course, nothing DOES say i love you like something growing out of an extinct bird's sphincter. btw, i tried to click and enlarge and it wouldn't let me... beautiful plates nonetheless.

wow, I really like the Dodo with the bling coming out of its butt! although I must admit I read your first sentence as "newly fired fecal pieces." And then it took me a minute to figure out just what those spiky blobs on those plates. wonderful, as always.